Nick was editor-at-large at Mental Floss. Before that, he was the Village Voice's web editor. He covers the NBA and NFL for Slate, has reviewed Guy Fieri's restaurant for the Voice, and took cold showers for a week in order to write a Men's Health story. What's more, he has also written the very website you are reading right now.

VICE

“The Xfinity operator probably fancied herself victorious after she hung up. Little did she know, bolstered by Sun Tzu, I do not fear being disgraced ... I don't retreat; I ebb like the tide. And only a fool turns his back on the tide. (That's not a Sun Tzu quote; I think it might be from Moana.)”

“‘For me writing is like breathing,’” the poet Pablo Neruda told the Paris Review in 1971. “I could not live without breathing and I could not live without writing.” For me, writing is less like breathing and more like flatulence. It comes in bursts and adheres to no schedule, and if I try to force it, bad things come about.

Mental Floss

"The bus to Atlantic City is oversold, over-air-conditioned, and struggling to get out of Manhattan. Normally, I’d appreciate the irony that Greyhound dubs this shuttle the Lucky Streak, but right now I’m too busy sorting through my notes about implied odds, effective value, and something called “M-ratio.”

"Less than a year after Spuds' national TV debut, Strom Thurmond stood on the floor of the U.S. Senate chamber and waved a stuffed Spuds MacKenzie doll ... He made his case while standing in front of huge posters featuring the "Ayatollah of Partyollah" himself, Spuds MacKenzie."

"In the third quarter, Hitmen QB Charles Puleri is tackled after attempting a throw and stays crumpled on the ground. He eventually hobbles off as a disgusted Jesse Ventura laments his poor play. We eventually cut live to Puleri's mic'd up concussion test, complete with running commentary from Ventura. In retrospect, this was as ridiculous as a 1950s cigarette ad where a doctor recommends his favorite brand."

"There were only minor quibbles about the wind. Employees at the restaurant on the 95th floor noted that bottles in the wine rack clanked. (They moved the wine to the basement, to be fetched via express elevator.) When one woman was upset her chandelier swayed on breezy days, Khan reinforced the fixture himself."

SLATE

"You don’t add Kevin Durant to your 73-win team to eke out a few wins here and there. The 2017 Warriors were engineered for devastation. If you’d assembled them in your garage, representatives from the Department of Defense would come knocking at your door, and they would be wearing hazmat suits."

"Kyrie Irving is a man of remarkable talent. His handles are nonpareil and his ability to finish at the rim around, amongst, under, and betwixt defenders is breathtaking in the most literal sense—you gasp and hold the oxygen inside your lungs until you see the slow-motion replay or turn blue, whichever comes first."

"ESPN has been built to trim every last edible bit from a story, and with basketball’s greatest rumormonger and scoop-getter at its disposal, there’s no telling what the Worldwide Leader will now be capable of. My best guess is it will look a lot like what Gustavus Swift did to cows back in the 19th century."

Village Voice

"I’ve been making fun of Guy Fieri for a pretty long time. I mean, look at him: If we ever get dragged into World War III, the Axis powers will put his chubby, bleached-blond head on propaganda posters to illustrate what us awful Americans are like. But I’m not alone, everyone makes fun of Guy Fieri. He’s the ankle-high, tattoo-covered, goateed orange in the forest of low-hanging fruits."

"We’ve done the science, and the one thing that could ever truly “only happen in New York” would be if a bodega cat pushed Alec Baldwin out of the way of a falling air conditioning unit while he was filming a 'Talk Stoop' segment for Taxi TV."

"The “Vinyl is Back!” piece has been a news staple for decades. It allows business reporters to let their hair down and jam a little with some funky tunage, just like back in their freewheeling J-School days. It also gives editors an assignment for music writers they don’t particularly like."